BUSHKILL, Pa. (AP)  Matthew Gallagher rises at 2:30
a.m. every workday and rushes to get ready so he can be at his job in New Jersey
by 4:30 a.m. Gallagher isn't alone in his lengthy drive to the New York area.
In the past decade, more and more workers have fled the city and its suburbs
for the Pocono Mountains, helping give the region some of the longest commuting
times in the nation, according to U.S. Census figures released Tuesday.

Lehman Township topped the list of worst
daily commutes in the country among places with at least 1,000 workers. The
mean daily travel time: 60 minutes.

"I sit in traffic, at a minimum, for an hour and a half
every morning. Evenings are worse," said Gallagher, a dispatcher for a trucking
company in Newark, 78 miles away. "The worst I've ever had was four hours in
a snowstorm."

In eight years of making the drive he put 456,000 miles
on his 1993 Mazda Protege. The car finally died five months ago.

But Gallagher, 37, said the commute makes sense. His house
in Lehman is a palace compared to what he could afford in New Jersey, where
he used to live. And overdeveloped, traffic-clogged suburbs, he said, are no
match for the thick pine forests of the Poconos.

"I'd love to work where I live, but I have to go where
the money is, and that's in metro New York," he said.

So many New Yorkers have relocated to Lehman in the past
10 years that some like to call it New York's sixth borough.

The influx is transforming the community. Once populated
almost entirely by summer vacationers, the five gated developments where almost
all the township's 7,515 residents live are now inhabited year-round.

The township has had to spend $53 million on new schools
in the past five years. The roads, once clogged only by tourists, are being
overhauled to accommodate a stream of commuters.

"It used to be that you'd never see anyone on the road
after midnight," said township supervisor Jim Sivick. "Now, they commute around
the clock. You see cars at 3 a.m. and you don't know whether its the night shift
coming back from work or the morning crew on their way in."

Four nearby Pennsylvania townships also landed in the top
20 for longest travel time to work, evidence that the ever-expanding metro New
York area is holding on to its reputation as home to the nation's worst commute.

Residents of the Bronx in New York were near the top of
the list with an average commuting time of 43 minutes. New York City residents
as a whole averaged 40 minutes, and several suburbs in New Jersey reported similar
commuting times.

Elsewhere in the country, Alvarado, Texas, a suburb of
Dallas and Fort Worth, had the second-longest average commute, at 59 minutes.
Elliott County, Ky., about 84 miles east of Lexington, reported a 49-minute
commute.

Los Angeles County  despite its reputation for impassable
highways  reported a mean daily commute of 29.4 minutes. Drive times were
worse in far-flung suburbs of San Francisco and San Jose, including Oakley (44
minutes) and Los Banos (45 minutes).

The shortest commute was at Laughlin Air Force Base near
the Mexican border in southwest Texas. Average time to work: just under six
minutes.

Lt. Jessica Miller, who works in the base's public affairs
office, said she drives to work even though walking would only add four minutes
to her commute.

"Sometimes I don't even bother to turn on the air conditioner
or heater in my car," she said. "I put in a CD, and it'll only be through one
verse before I get to work."

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